#series: diversity december

[loganhowlettshousewife]

logan howlett x curvy!reader

series masterlist - my masterlist

warnings: smut, oral (fem!receiving), thigh fucking, mentions of unprotected piv, very soft and loving, anyone can technically read it but it was written with a curvy reader in mind

logan’s hands always somehow find their way to your thighs. he likes to squeeze the flesh, feeling the dips in the fat when his fingers dig into your skin, making temporary divots there that burn with his touch long after he’s let go.

you wish, sometimes, that his fingers would leave marks, a tattoo of his hand on the inside of your thigh, a reminder that the phantom touch you constantly feel was real, and it will be again the moment he finds you after classes are finished, guiding you to your shared room in the mansion and ignoring the calls of both your names as you pass by other mutants vying for your attention.

when he’s angry, when he’s frustrated, when he’s annoyed, his hands end up on your thighs, sneaking under the skirts that you began to wear more often once your relationship with him went from friends to more. he knows you wear them for him, so he can have easy access - you see it in the slant of his mouth, the knowing glint in his eyes, the smirk he flashes in your direction as he traces your thighs under the table.

but it’s not just a balm he uses to soothe the pains of a hard day - even when he’s in a pleasant mood he’ll find some excuse. he’ll claim to deserve a reward for getting through a long day without stabbing anybody with his claws, and when you relent as you always do, he’ll smile as he watches the flesh move, staring like they’re the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

his absolute favourite thing is to bury himself between your thighs, eating you out until you’re overstimulated, squirming both away from him and pushing closer, your body unable to decide which it wants. he begs you to crush him, says he’d be grateful to die between your thighs, despite the fact that with his enhanced strength it’s pretty much an impossibility.

it’s what brought you to the here and now, both you and logan completely undressed, your pussy so wet it’s dripping a puddle onto the sheets, logan’s cock achingly hard. but he refuses to fuck you, not yet, not until he gets to spend quality time with his favourite part of you.

he presses kisses to every inch of skin on your thighs, slapping them gently just to watch the fat jiggle, groaning before mouthing another wet kiss onto said patch of skin, making sure to leave you with marks to remind you of him.

“fucking gorgeous, darlin’,” he mumbles against your thigh, nipping and sucking until yet another bruise starts to form. no one ever gets to see these hickeys but you and him - it’s not a way to tell everyone else you’re taken and to back off, not another jealous stunt to keep away potential suitors, instead it’s just for the two of you.

you can’t tell if minutes or hours pass by. your inner thighs burn from the scratch of his beard as he eats you out, tongue and fingers expertly working together to bring you to your peak. he knows your body as well as you do by now, potentially even better since his longer fingers are always able to reach where you never can, and he knows to keep going even when you’re crying and begging that it’s too much. 

the pain of overstimulation fades into a dull pleasure, your mind feeling fuzzy with it. he waits for you to return to yourself before flipping you around, expertly manoeuvring you into whatever position he wants for tonight. it’s easy to give up control to him, easy to let him do whatever he wants to your body, chase his own pleasure after he so generously brought you your own.

you jolt slightly when his hands spread your thighs apart, your eyes fluttering open to observe the sight of him spreading lube on the skin there. he smiles apologetically when you wince at the cold feeling, and rubs it in until it warms up between your bodies.

“this okay?” he asks, and you hum your agreement.

you’ve done this before, him fucking in between your thighs. it makes him cum faster than any other position, makes him go feral in a way you can’t even get by offering to let him cum inside of you. like a touch-starved virgin he never lasts very long, so he always makes sure to get you off before he does anything for himself, arguing that your pleasure is more important than his, that he’d do anything if he knew it’d make you feel good.

it’s horrible and gross and romantic and makes your heart flutter like a butterfly in your chest, your ribs acting as a cage, the only thing stopping it from fluttering so hard it exits your body. sometimes, you feel you might truly die from logan’s words, the softness he never shares with anyone else, the vulnerability he affords you.

he lines himself up to fuck into the tight space between your thighs, moaning at the warm tightness of you around him. he’s gripping at your arms like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, doesn’t know where to place them, scared to touch you in case he presses too hard, loses himself in the moment and forgets that his strength much surpasses your own. he holds onto you like an anchor before letting go just as quickly, his breathing ragged as his harsh pants and groans sound in your ears.

it’s the most beautiful melody, one you wish you could play on repeat forever, a song for only you.

every thrust has his cock sliding against your wet cunt, the head brushing against your clit in a way that has you arching your back against him, meeting his every thrust, changing the angle so it suits you better and hits that spot every time, sending sparks of white-hot pleasure up your spine.

every moan and cry that passes your lips only works to spur logan on. he’s animalistic as he fucks your thighs, one arm snaking around your chest to pinch and roll your nipple until it hardens into a peak under his ministrations. it’s rapid and sweaty and loud, your pleasure rising so quickly it catches you off guard. one second you’re not and the next you’re on the precipice, shouting out logan’s name in surprise.

it washes over you, like a wave taking you under, and for a few minutes or days or years you’re in total darkness. when you come back to yourself it’s to the feel of sticky cum on your thighs and logan curled around you. he’s patient while your breathing calms, heart rate lowering back down to a normal level before he moves away from you.

“i’m just leaving to run a bath,” he says, waits for your agreement to make sure you’re in the right headspace to be left alone, shuffles into the ensuite bathroom to prepare the ridiculously bubbly baths that you adore and he always complains are excessive.

you hear the sound of the water running, can imagine him kneeling beside the tub with the fancy bubble bath soap that you used to only buy for yourself as a treat but now seems to never run empty. 

he comes back minutes later, though you can’t be certain as your sense of time is a blurred mess, carries you into the bathroom despite your protests that you could probably, most likely, maybe walk on your own the few feet of distance required, helping you into the bath. you sigh as the warm water washes over your muscles, an instant relaxation seeping into your bones, a private smile curling on your lips.

you’re lucky the tub in his bathroom is big enough to accommodate two, allowing him to settle behind you, pulling you into his chest.

“thank you,” you say, twining one of your hands in his, staring at the contrast, his rough calloused hands in yours.

“i know a way you can thank me,” he says, only half serious, his unused hand spreading possessively on your thigh. he knows it won’t happen, not tonight, not right now, but he likes the way it makes you squeal out his name in a reproachful tone. he just laughs, happy, a sound that makes you smile in turn.

diversity december taglist: @raeinyourdreams @meetmypointlessaddiction @chubbyhedgehog @yxtkiwiyxt @isepod @dis-plus-fanfic-reblog-writes

curvy reader: @spencerswh0r3 @seasonofthenerd @thegothempress @yourlocalmerchgirl

[shironezuninja]

If the 2019 Scandal didn’t leave me doing a lifetime of Soul Searching and distancing myself from several anime series, I would be using screenshots from the 9th episode of Ouran High School Host Club to support the people of Pride Month by now.

Thankfully, this screenshot does the job well, and it also reminds me of the late voice actress who had given me a reason to respect that community over flawed/disgraced celebrities.

Madeline Blaustein loved Looney Tunes, and gave our OG Meowth Bugs Bunny’s accent. If she were still with us a decade later before the pandemic, I wonder what she would’ve thought of her Funimation colleague who had left everyone in shock and dealing with mixed emotions.

[duckprintspress]

Back “A Truth Universally Acknowledged” Today!

We’re thrilled to announce that the crowdfunding campaign for our next anthology, A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” is now live on Kickstarter – and already selected by them as a project they love!

With this third installment in our Queer Fanworks Inspired By… anthology series, we set out to explore the truth by which we at Duck Prints Press live: that a classic work without a single canonically queer character must be in want of a very LGBTQIA+ makeover! A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with 21 short stories and 20 full-page color artworks, is just that. 38 creators have contributed to this project, drawing inspiration from Pride and Prejudice’s characters and story to create delightful, thoughtful, intriguing, and (of course) very queer fanworks and Pride and Prejudice-inspired original works. For this collection, we encouraged our creators to focus on Sapphic/wlw relationships and/or transgender and genderqueer interpretations for their inspiration, though those are definitely not the only types of queer we’ve fit into this diverse collection. We’re also offering an awesome array of merchandise – art prints and note cards and an enamel pin and a folding fan and more!

We’ll be posting more information about the campaign and the contributing creators throughout the next couple weeks, so make sure to give us a follow on social media.

This campaign ends on December 5th 2024 – don’t miss your chance to get all this awesome stuff! Become a backer today!

It’s also a great time to become a Patreon backer – and you’ll get a free bonus piece of merch if you back both the “A Truth Universally Acknowledged” campaign and are a $10/month or $25/month level supporter!

[pharawee]

I usually don't do yearly recaps because my memory sucks December is one of the busiest months for me and I'm lucky if I get to gif at all but this year I thought I'd take a look at all of the gifsets I did in 2024 and see which shows, pairings and moments I liked the most.

✨FAV BLS OF 2024

1000 Years Old: 2024 was supposed to be the year of vampire BL (going by all the announcements and pilot trailers) but in the end only this one aired (edit: wait, I forgot about OMG! Vampire to protect myself 🥴) - and it was neither spicy nor particularly spooky. Instead, it was all heart and quirkiness and when it was over I cried for a week because of the bittersweet ending.

Playboyy: This show is truly a masterpiece, with layers of subtext and social commentary. Also, it's fun and camp and sexy and ridiculous. I'm so glad it's going to get a second season.

Caged Again: How come that a little show about a penguin and a panther is legit one of the best - if not THE BEST - Thai BL of the year?

Knock Knock, Boys: I came for Best and Seng and Pak but then Almond and Latte bewitched me body and soul. Kongthup now owns me.

Every You, Every Me: I don't know what I was expecting (well, okay, a whole lot of Mick & Top - which is exactly what I got) but it surely wasn't crying my eyes out for two episodes right in the middle of the show.

Spare Me Your Mercy: Long awaited and currently still airing - I actually love this show a lot because it reminds me of all the detective dramas (esp Endeavour and Grantchester) I used to binge. Morse but make it queer is actually all I ever wanted.

7 Days Before Valentine: This show's depth and artistry and stageplay-like character absolutely blew me away.

I Saw You in My Dream: WeTV absolutely blew it out of the water this year with their many diverse productions, and this unassuming and charming little show with a supernatural twist (love me one of those!) was no exception.

Monster Next Door: Big Thanakorn in his first main role with his first acting partner in an extremely fun and all around lovely Kongthup/WeTV production. And I just love how nuanced it was when they could have just stuck with the whole introvert/extrovert cliché.

✨FAV PAIRINGS OF 2024

Hope x Save (Jack & Joker): These two completely took me by surprise, especially because I had such an intense reaction to Pee Phiravich's character in La Pluie. I had originally set my eyes on PromMark and while I definitely ate up their crumbs, HopeSave just checked all of my boxes: morally grey antagonists (at least for a while there), doomed by the narrative (until they actually got their happy ending, yay!) and ride and die for each other.

Pete x Kenta (Pit Babe): I'll be a PeteKenta truther until the day I die (see all of the checkboxes above), and if Change2561 didn't subscribe to the branded pair model, they'd agree with me. As things are I'm actually kind of meh about Pit Babe 2. I bet KentaKim won't have knives at each other's throats!! (PeteWay is delicious though.)

Prom x Nont (Playboyy): Uhhh, that's a lot of the same checked boxes. So maybe I have a type. Thanks 2024 for making me realise. Also, I hope these two make each other worse in season 2 (before they get their HEA because ultimately I'm vanilla like that).

Latte x Almond (Knock Knock, Boys!): Oh God, these two. I was prepared to be ride or die for Thanwa and Peak but then LatteAlmond barged in with a pink sex toy and it was over for me. They just have so much heart and so much sincerity between them (and while their dynamics are different in Caged Again I'm really enjoying Nokia and Jaonine there too for pretty much the same reason + their incredible comedic timing).

X x Namping (Every Me, Every You): It's probably a good thing we got these two for two episodes only because we might not have survived a whole 8 or 10 or even 12 episodes of them. Plus, the anthology-like character of the series made a sad ending possible in the first place, and I really appreciate it - even if it almost destroyed me.

✨FAV MOMENTS OF 2024

Twins: For a moment there we had FrameRyan and it was beautiful.

The Sign: Chalothorn stole the whole show for me and then when he inexplicably vanished I kind of stopped watching. Whoops.

Deep Night: I have seen the throuple light thanks to SeijiPanKen.

The Rebound: Frank Thanatsaran's acting (but also that scene...) overshadowing pretty much everything else (and now he's with Star Hunter which... you know... ehnnnn 🥲)

To Be Continued: Fluke Pongsapat and Junior Khajbhunditt starring in a way underrated 8-episode netflix show with one of the most beautiful love scenes ever, and I've been wanting more of them ever since.

Two Worlds: Kongthup giveth and Kongthup taketh away (aka for one and a half episodes I had Phupha and Khram and now I will never know peace).

Century of Love: Offroad Kantapon as a sultry fox spirit.

Sunset x Vibes: When Star Hunter remembered Fong and JJ exist and then they stole the whole entire show (there really wasn't much to steal though...).

The Sign: Whatever was going on between Heng Asavarid and Nat Sakdatorn in this scene BUT I NEED MORE (pls Idolfactory I'm begging you release Heng from his solo actor prison).

Two Worlds: Kongthup choosing violence by giving Pak and Mon one of the spiciest love scenes of the year.

The Rebound: THESE TWO (boxes checked!! But also I need more Nammon in my life).

Kidnap: GMMTV's strategic placement of Papang in a suit.

The Hidden Moon: Whenever that tiny low-budget show got surprisingly deep and artsy (and also spicy).

My Stand-In: When I watched a whole show for one (1) character that wasn't really a character at all. Oh, the tragedy of it all (and yes, I'm still scared of Ming).

Pit Babe: When I made several posts about the Pit Babe novel but then I actually ended up loving the villains more than the main characters. I'm watching Pit Babe 2 for them and them only. Winner of my heart here I come!

Aaand that's it, my first ever yearly (Thai) BL recap - which actually ended up way longer than planned (guess my memory isn't as bad as I thought. Then again, I had my gifs to fall back on).

2024 was an amazingly diverse year for Thai QL (along with the wonderful news of marriage equality in Thailand finally becoming a reality) and looking back I now realise (not that I was ever seriously worried) that gmmtv's monopoly is actually way more of a blessing than a curse because not only did it cause WeTV to heavily invest in their own productions, it also leaves more than enough room for innovation and creativity via smaller and indie companies (along with the truly big players finally paying more attention - see: Spare Me Your Mercy). Innovation which in turn enriches gmmtv's portfolio as well (judging by their line-up for 2025 the years to come). In short: the Thai BL ecosystem is truly thriving.

And with that, may 2025 be even queerer than 2024 with tons of marriage proposals and actual marriages (PorschArm here we go!), and a favourite little (or in gmmtv's case not so little lmao) BL niche for everyone.

I hope you had as much fun with BL in 2024 as I had. I really appreciate everyone's commentary posts and meta and fanart and gifsets and tag games and reaction posts, even if I didn't spend as much time on my dashboard this year as I wanted to. I'm so glad tumblr BL fandom exists. ILU guys. Only the bestest and kindest things for you in 2025!🌈✨

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in December 2024 🌈

Find these books and more here.

🌈 Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Happy reading!

❓What was the last queer book you read?

[ Release dates may have changed. ]

❤️ Sugar-Coated Kisses - Echo Lark 🧡 Christmas at Watson Memorial - Clara Ann Simons 💛 Warm-Blooded - J Greene 💚 It Takes Three To Tango - Jem Wendel 💙 The Black Curse - N.A. Moore 💜 Heavenly Tyrant - Xiran Jay Zhao ❤️ Encrypted Hearts - E.V. Bancroft 🧡 Dangerous Devotion - Robin Jo Margaret 💛 Sew in Love - Rhea Fox 💙 Saint - Chani Lynn Feener 💜 Her Ladyship's Christmas Companion - Theresa Meiningen 🌈 A Sky of Emerald Stars - A.K. Mulford

❤️ Inked in Blood and Memory - Allison Ivy 🧡 The Key - Jo Morgan Sloan 💛 Home Between Homes - Flynn Woods 💚 A Kiss for the Holidays - C.S. Autumn 💙 Loving the Linebacker - Amaya Knight 💜 Close to Home - Allisa Bahney ❤️ Christmas Shelter - Eva Gonzay & Julia C. Brown 🧡 This Isn't Everything You Are - J. Marie Rundquist 💛 Keep It in the Dark - Justin Arnold 💙 Santa & His Elf - Bink Cummings 💜 On the Subject of Kittens and Mittens - Katie Silverwings 🌈 Winter's Whisper - M Bonneau

❤️ Boyfriends - refrainbow 🧡 Innis Harbor - Patricia Evans 💛 A Complementary Connection - Eskay Kabba 💚 Point of Sighs - Melissa Scott 💙 Bind You by Blood - Shepard DiStasio 💜 The Resurrectionist - A. Rae Dunlap ❤️ Fractured Dreamer - A.K. Adler 🧡 The Husky and His White Cat Shizun - Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou 💛 Becoming Disabled - Jan Doolittle Wilson 💙 A Caress of Water - Nico Silver 💜 How to Survive As a Villain 1 - Yi Yi Yi Yi 🌈 The Silent Concubine - Qiang Tang

❤️ Hadrian - Harlowe Savage 🧡 A Series of Rooms - A.J. Barlowe 💛 Inklings of Invisibility - S.L. Dove Cooper 💚 The Cobbler and His Elves - C.B. Wren 💙 A Nightclub for the Holidays - Arden Coutts 💜 Armor of Dusk - Jess Galaxie ❤️ Twisted Shadows - Allie Therin 🧡 A Deception of Courts - Ben Alderson 💛 Trial Run - Carsen Taite 💙 How to Flirt with a Witch - Tiana Warner 💜 Roughed Up - Kate Hawthorne 🌈 House of Crimson Curses - Ruby Roe

❤️ Sister Snake - Amanda Lee Koe 🧡 Roland Rogers Isn't Dead Yet - Samantha Allen 💛 The Rivals - Jane Pek 💚 Private Rites - Julia Armfield 💙 The Christmas Switch - Briar Prescott 💜 Ribbonwood - Ruby Landers ❤️ Shifting Lanes - Joanne Kwan 🧡 Twice-Spent Comet - Ziggy Schutz 💛 A Crush for the Holidays - E.L. Ough 💙 Resist - Lasairiona Lewis 💜 Free from Falling - E.L. Massey 🌈 The Legendary Master's Wife - Yin Ya

❤️ Tide Breaker's Curse - Ivy H. Marikova 🧡 Twist Her - Terri Ronald 💛 How to Fuck Like a Girl - Vera Blossom 💚 Dog Days of Christmas - Krystal Wolfgang & Kimberly Wolfgang 💙 Warmer, Colder - Alexia Onyx 💜 Salt in the Wind - Jenna Pine ❤️ What We Carry With Us - Joseff McKenneth Goodwin 🧡 Reinvention - Karol Yan 💛 Christmas Carols - Maxime Jaz 💙 I'm Not Your Pet - Fae Quin 💜 Something Extraordinary - Alexis Hall 🌈 I Might Be in Trouble - Daniel Aleman

❤️ Deck the Palms - Annabeth Albert 🧡 Don't Get It Twisted - Wren Taylor 💛 Ice & Sweet - Charlie Novak 💚 Speak EZ - Elle E. Ire 💙 The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish - Xue Shan Fei Hu 💜 Horns For Hell - Rafael Nicolás ❤️ Flamboyant Fictions - Ian Fleishman 🧡 Where the Heart Is - Jenni Simonis 💛 Sorry I Kissed Your Dad - Achilles King 💙 Merry Weihnachten - E.J. Noyes 💜 An Alpha for the Holidays - Emily Axon 🌈 The Blessed - Anne Shade

❤️ Our Sinful Love - Amy H. 🧡 Gambler's Conceit - Adara Wolf & R. Phoenix 💛 Fate and Flambe - Leena Metcalfe 💚 Figure You Out - Hannah Danielle & K.F. Starfell 💙 Amaranthine - Aricka Alexander 💜 Twisted Loyalties - Barbara J. Webb ❤️ Echoes of Us - Alex Cross 🧡 The Shadowbearer's Curse - Jasmyn Morning 💛 Too Many Beds - Various 💙 We Are the Beasts - Gigi Griffis 💜 Unspoken - N.N. Britt 🌈 Rainbows After Storms - Luka Kobachi

❤️ The Shutouts - Gabrielle Korn 🧡 Robin's Worlds - Rainie Oet & Mathias Ball 💛 What the Woods Took - Courtney Gould 💚 Rescue Me - N. Slater 💙 Seb & Ailin - Michele Notaro 💜 The International Love Story - Jonas Noelting ❤️ Waterlogged - Nance Sparks 🧡 The Guardians - Sheri Lewis Wohl 💛 The Changeling's Faerie Prince - K.D. Ellis 💙 Until at Dawn We Wake - Charlotte Dalwood 💜 How to Get a Life in Ten Dates - Jenny L. Howe 🌈 Hammajang Luck - Makana Yamamoto

❤️ The Rules of Royalty - Cale Dietrich 🧡 Tired of Waiting for Tomorrow - Allison K. Garcia 💛 One Last Run - Bryce Oakley 💚 Reckless Hearts - Jax Calder 💙 Christmissed - Blythe H. Warren 💜 How Could You - Ren Strapp ❤️ Blackened - Tyler Briggs 🧡 Gratification in Gluttony - Nik Knight 💛 The Mogul Meets Her Match - Julia Underwood 💙 How to Be Heard - Roxane Gay 💜 The Case of the Missing Maid - Rob Osler 🌈 Shades of Us - D.L. Sims

[lonewolflupe]

I've seen several of these around Tumblr, and thought it would be fun to do one myself as well! So here's my art progress in 2024!

Ramblings and more art comparisons/progress below the cut (:

Statistics

I started drawing humans (mostly clones eheh) and posting them here on Tumblr in June

Since then, I finished and posted about 140 (dakriff) drawings (I counted my files for this post and I feel like I miscalculated but it's actually that many??)

Those include just below 50 pieces drawn with my mouse (June-October)..

.. and just over 90 since I got my drawing screen in early November (help)

Famous last words

If they ever put me away behind closed doors, I hope they let me keep my drawing screen ~Lupe, December 31, 2024

Here's a month-to-month look with more art (because with over 140 pieces in 7 months, it was hard to pick just one for each month!). Don't feel obligated to read all this, I just thought it was fun for myself to read this back later (when hopefully, I made even more art progress) (:

I finally found the courage to start posting here on Tumblr, and it didn't take me long to introduce my Jedi OC Lupe (I actually never posted the Youngling Lupe art, so that's a bonus, I guess). Lots of templates and references, because drawing humans is HARD. I made my own clone-portrait-template and used it to create the clones from the Lone Wolf Squad.

First time drawing clone armour, which was actually more fun and satisfying than I had imagined. I tried adding more body below my portraits. Experimenting with art styles to find something that I felt comfortable with.

More clones, including OC art. I tried adding a little bit of depth, but shading felt impossible with my mouse. I also started my Clone Shenanigans series (which I should continue some day).

If you noticed an increase in Fox content, that's because I fell hard for this guy haha. And of course there's more of the clones I loved from the beginning, like Fives and Echo <3 I reached 100 followers and celebrated with an art event. Which was very time-consuming because I was still drawing with my mouse, but it was so much fun and I think it really helped me progress my art skills (and it started some friendships that are now very dear to me ❤️). Also, I finally started doing some effort with shading/lighting.

I wrapped up my 100 follower event and almost immediately dove into my inbox Trick-Or-Treating event, including both art and writings. I put quite some time in those fics, so I feel like I didn't do as much art as the previous and next months (DEFINITELY not as much as the next months, ahahaha).

So this is where the fun begins (nah it started back in June, but this is the moment I went totally feral with drawing clones ahahaha). Early November, I received my drawing screen, which means I started drawing with a pen directly on screen instead of using my mouse (which saves a LOT of time). After some practicing, I started getting better feeling for both full-body and armoured clones with my The Blorbo Wars series (which you really seemed to like haha, thanks for all the lovely attention! I promise I'll continue the series!).

I think I've gone a bit rogue this month, haha. I had so much fun celebrating my Advent Event (I actually did most of the art for that event in November 😅)! I barely wrapped that up when I hit 300 followers, which I'm currently celebrating with my Meme Mania! I'm finally at a place where I'm really enjoying my art style, especially for drawing faces. Of course there's always room for improvement, and I'm totally here for it!

Thank you all so much for sticking with me, for supporting me and encouraging me <3 This has been a bit of an exhausting year (mostly because of good things, for once), and the Tumblr clone community has been such a nice diversion from all the IRL adulting. Thanks for being here and welcoming me like you did <3

For 2025..

I will continue drawing, of course! I can't wait to see where I'll be in another few months! I'd love to practice some more lighting/rendering, I'm definitely going to get better with anatomy! And perhaps I'll finally dive into the abyss that's called proper backgrounds.. I also have plans to do some art for my longfic A Lupe Of Faith, to give Lupe a bit more attention. And I have so many ideas for upcoming events, it's insane haha.

I will continue writing as well, don't worry. It's just that I'm really sick with the drawing-bug at the moment. I'll try to vary a little bit.

Besides the art and the writing, I can't wait to continue all the friendships I've made here, to see whatever new clone content you'll all come up with! (And maybe we'll get some more canon clone content, Lucasfilm/Disney pretty please???)

Thanks to all of you for making this my digital home ❤️

[monarchisms]

im merely curious because of what you mentioned previously, but what do you think is different between the watcher service vs dropout? i /do/ think there is one, but i can't put my finger on it

as of right now, there are two major differences in my eyes: legacy and diversity

the first point, i had to think on for longer because though i'm familiar with dropout because my friends are into their content, my own perspective is lacking. so, i did some minor research to fact check stuff

dropout, i feel, is an exception to the rule in regards to internet-based companies making their own website/streaming services. until recently, they have existed as collegehumor since fucking 1999. they have lots of prior experiences to reflect on, and a long-term audience that often gives them feedback they're receptive to. their older content staying on youtube alongside some new ongoing stuff still being uploaded there is a nice plus. ryan and shane got popular through unsolved comparatively much sooner in 2016, as did steven in that same year with worth it, watcher currently is only 4 years old, so their foundation is more shaky right now

what also helped alongside that was that the transition wasn't as jarring as watcher's announcement. their subscription price on launch in september 2018 was $3.99 a month up until december, when they eased into tiered subs, which must've helped a lot. afaik, watcher tv has no mobile app (yet?), and many fans outside the US are region-locked without a vpn or something similar. with watcher and dropout in its current day each being $5.99, this leads into...

the second point: diversity. dropout launched mobile versions of their service 3 months after the official launch. watcher is exclusive to one official platform, as mentioned before, but in my opinion, what hurts watcher the most is series diversity. they have like, one series going on for a few weeks or months before another starts, so if someone paid them the fee, it'd be for something they might not even be interested in. likely, they'd binge the series they enjoy and unsub until the next season comes out. dropout has the advantages of both legacy series under the collegehumor name readily available, and their unscripted ongoing series coming out concurrently with a fixed schedule so than something new would be coming out i think every weekday at this point. it's reall more bang for your buck

all of this is why i said watcher "wanted to be dropout so bad" yesterday. they've created Yet Another streaming service with a price and catalogue that doesn't justify its existence. this could've been a more focused patreon. this could've been a youtube membership. this could've been a secret third thing. this could've been anything else than what we got, and it would've had the potential to be better.

tl;dr- this is watcher right now:

[centrally-unplanned]

@pareorogas showing pictures of a contemporaneous report on the first and second ever Comikets by some of its organizers, a very good find!

All...handwritten Japanese text with occasional crazy fonts and vertical-row alignment. Just great for efficient OCR'ing so I can translate it, really easy to do, very nice.

Something you may have heard before is that the first Comikets were female-dominated - and that is true, this confirms that. You may also have heard that is due to things like the popularity of the Gundam franchise, a series showcasing male heroes and anti-heroes; something that the fujoshis were "all upons", to say the least. I'm sure that would be true later, but the first Comiket was in December of 1975 - Gundam didn't come out until 1979. Space Battleship Yamato had only just aired the year before, genre anime for adults was very new. The more likely explanation is the one highlighted here - that this was a manga-franchises-first event, manga was just bigger amoung women at the time given the shoujo boom, and most importantly the event was advertised in a shoujo magazine:

This ad appeared in Bessatsu Shojo Comic, and the article above notes that doujin of works by the mangaka Moto Hagio (who published in that magazine) were the most popular ones being sold. Additionally there was a screening of, if I have the details right here, a "Dynavision" fan animated short adapting Gynasium in November, a work by Hagio. That is a term the creators (chiefly Comiket co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa) used to describe essentially panning & moving images of stills from the manga. It was 1975, a souped-up PowerPoint presentation was impressive then and took a lot of work to make!

All of this is to say that the first Comiket had the vision of being a diverse collective of eclectic artists - and it was, for sure - but that vision was partially swamped by a bunch of fans for a few specific properties doing their own thing. The article strikes a very concerned tone throughout about this - it is worried Comiket will collapse into being a "shallow event" riding popular trends, as opposed to being something with a life of its own. The founders of Comiket want people to come for the craft of doujin itself, not for One Specific Thing that happens to be there. As such, they mark the event a success but hope that the circles can "turn things upside down", not rely on "gimmicks", and push Comiket farther in the future.

I think the record shows they will achieve that! But I would be interested in more coverage of the early ones to see how they got there.

That last page by the way includes a list of all the circles that participated - not sure if that information was easily accessible before, maybe it was, but I am certainly glad to have it now! Reviewing them you see the things you would expect, like the "Erotica Alliance" - banding together to fight for freedom! But one of them struck me personally:

Middle Earth Studios Foreign Comic Book Sale

So Lord of the Rings was translated into Japanese in 1972, it was very popular in Japan. But foreign comic book sales? So funnily enough, Rankin Bass - yes the American studio who made the claymation Christmas Specials - was making an adaptation of the Hobbit for release in 1977, and by "making" I mean they outsourced all of it to Japanese studio Topcraft. So that was being animated at this time, I wonder if there was some fan stuff going on there, and that is the "foreign"? Or maybe they just mean, you know, it is a foreign work, domestic comics about a foreign franchise.

But I would love to know if western LOTR fanzines were being sold at the first Comiket. I want to believe!

[sheikzine]

Preorders for Harp in Shadows: A Sheik Zine are now open!

Harp in Shadows: A Sheik Zine is a collaborative digital fanzine featuring the works of 40+ artists and 10+ writers, dedicated to Sheik from the Legend of Zelda series.

⭐ Get your bundle here! ⭐

Preorders are open from now until December 15th, 2023. All proceeds will be donated to GATE: Global Action for Trans Equality, an organization that works towards justice and equality for trans, gender diverse, and intersex communities. All products will be distributed in late December 2023.

༻༻༻⋇⋆۞⋆⋇༺༺༺

💜 Digital Zine Bundle: $15

◆ 1 Digital Zine PDF

❤️ Merch Bundle: $10

◆ 35 icons & 22 icon pieces (customizable) ◆ 3 Notepads (weekly & monthly calendars) ◆ 3 Wallpapers* ◆ 2 Animations* ◆ 2 Bookmarks ◆ 1 Digital Soundtrack

💙 Full Bundle: $20

◆ 1 Digital Zine PDF ◆ 35 icons & 22 icon pieces (customizable) ◆ 3 Notepads (weekly & monthly calendars) ◆ 3 Wallpapers* ◆ 2 Animations* ◆ 2 Bookmarks ◆ 1 Digital Soundtrack

*Different sizes included

༻༻༻⋇⋆۞⋆⋇༺༺༺

Video edited by @t33th-t00th

[thesims4blogger]

The Sims 4 Life & Death Expansion Pack is Now Available For Pre-order

You can preorder The Sims 4 Life & Death Expansion Pack now to start playing immediately when it launches on October 31, 2024 on PC via EA app™, Mac® via Origin, Epic Games Store and Steam®, PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One systems. The expansion pack will be released on October 31, 2024, and costs $39.99. 

EA and Maxis have just dropped an official asset pack for their upcoming The Sims 4 Life & Death Expansion Pack.

The screenshots showcase the new Grim Reaper Career, brand new World called Ravenwood and unique ghastly interactions coming in this DLC set.

Peel back the veil to uncover the secret to richer Sim lives and beyond in The Sims 4 Life & Death Expansion Pack. Achieve your dreams in life by ticking items off your Bucket List or pursue them as a Ghost with Unfinished Business. There is a ghastly new world to haunt, a career that’ll bring you closer to Grim, Wills to write, Crypts to explore, and even ghostly skills to master. There are no real endings — only transitions — as you move between life, afterlife, and even rebirth.

Official Description and Features

An Endless Journey

Build your Bucket List by collecting goals throughout your Sim’s life, starting as a Young Adult. Items will appear on your list based on your Sim’s traits and family relations, and you can also choose your own. Removing items is possible, but completing them yields powerful rewards. If a Sim’s life ends with items still on their list, they can devote their afterlife to completing their Unfinished Business. The ultimate reward for experiencing everything on their list is the option to be Reborn, though you can still choose to Move On or remain on this plane as a Ghost.

A Ghastly, Gorgeous Life

Make death your life’s work with a career of reaping souls, helping Ghosts, dispersing hauntings, and more as a member of Grim’s team. Or, you could become a Mortician and deal with death more from the perspective of the living. Outside of work, you might spend your days exploring Crypts and building your Thanatology skill for the new Ghost Historian Aspiration. These things – among other dark diversions like bonding with your Pet Crow (careful, provoking it could be deadly) or collecting and reading the lost Tarot Cards of Lady Ravendancer Goth – will have a special appeal to Sims who are Macabre, one of 3 new traits.

Goodbye (For Now)

Different Sims will grieve in different ways. There are 4 types that will tie in with both Sims’ personalities and their relationships with the deceased. Grieving Rituals are customizable and unscripted, allowing you to hold whatever type of event (or events) fits your story. In life, Sims can create Wills which can be used to pass down Heirlooms, assign guardians for surviving dependents, distribute their Simoleons, and more. Sims can honor the departed with a memorial display featuring their portrait, and by interring their urns in Crypts or with Custom Caskets and Gravesites.

Friendly or Fiendish?

Linger on as a Ghost and spend your afterlife helping or terrorizing the living. Ghosts will grow in their abilities as they do everything from assisting with household chores to levitating living Sims and hanging them upside down (fun AND profitable - they may drop Simoleons!). Their interactions with the living can earn them Fear or Goodwill essences, which can both be sold for Simoleons. There’s a lot to do after death; Ghosts can even pair up for a special, spectral Woohoo.

Official Sims 4 Life & Death Screens

Life & Death Pre-Order Bonus

If you purchase The Sims 4 Life & Death Expansion Pack by December 12th, you’ll receive the Macabre Mementos Digital Content set! This three-piece set contains two new Build items and one CAS item, including:

Lasting Legacy Family Portrait

Mournful Melodies Music Box

Plumed Elegance Mask

Macabre Mementos Digital Content —Wonder at treasures that have endured time’s passing, witnessing the come and go of generations with ghastly grace. Look upon those who came before in the Lasting Legacy Family Portrait, listen to the haunting lullaby of the Mournful Melodies Music Box, and masquerade in fowl finery with the Plumed Elegance Mask, available when you order through December 12**.

[ninja-muse]

So yeah, that happened… (Not as bad as it looks, though. The top half is books I own and read this month, not books I've acquired.)

November has been a month of highs and lows for me. Mostly lows, if I'm being honest. The US election kicked my brain back to 2020 for a couple days and I don't think I've really reset yet. (It's taken me three years and counting to reset from 2020 itself so I'm not surprised.) For any American reading this, I'm still very saddened for you and I wish there was something I could do beyond listening and sympathizing. I wish the world was a better place to live in.

And speaking of 2020 mode, I haven't been writing. I was at a crossroads at the end of October with a difficult scene, and even though I've fixed it so it's better, I still haven't continued. It's hard for me to write cheery, upbeat things when I'm scared and angry, and work's getting busier for the holidays, and both Bake Offs I follow were airing and that just seemed more important. At least this time, it's definitely writer's block rather than a terror of traumatizing people by writing diversely. (2020 was fun, y'all.)

And I also didn't write for five days because my mom and sister and I went to Disneyland. This was, of course, the high of the month! It was good to spend that time together, and do the rides and the whole experience, and see Disneyland as an adult. I'm especially glad we went when we did because I don't think I'm ever going to visit the States again.

It was also a fairly lukewarm reading month for me, which I don't think it helping the mental stuff. The best book I read was intense and heavy, a few of the others also dealt with dark stuff, and pretty much everything was "fine". No new favourites, though I've added the rest of Claudia Gray's Austenian mysteries to my TBR and I'm still thoroughly enjoying the Lady Trent novels. A couple of the other books (the Clarke, the Stearns) were ones I was hyped for but which didn't live up to expectations.

That said, for all that it's my lowest ranked book, The Price of the Stars was surprisingly fun. It's completely mindless, cliched space opera that reads like an off-brand Star Wars novel and I'm sure I'll have just as much fun with the sequel (also on my physical TBR). But I also recognize that the writing's on par with mediocre fanfiction or cult 1980s B-movies.

Books and otherwise, here's hoping for a better December.

And now, as always, here’s my list of everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Submerged - Hillel Levin

A journalist dives into a 1990s murder case—the disappearance, the first suspect, the second investigation, the innocent man in jail, the family secrets…

8.5/10

warning: grooming, molestation, rape, victim blaming, failures of the justice system

reading copy

The Murder of Mr. Wickham - Claudia Gray

The Darcys, the Tilneys, and sundry other friends and relations are attending the Knightleys’ house party when Mr. Wickham (uninvited) is killed. The murderer’s still in the house but everyone had motive.

7/10

major autistic character

warning: homophobia

off my TBR

The Empress Letters - Linda Rogers

A mother in the 1920s writes her life story in a series of letters to the daughter she’s searching for in China.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (bisexual), Jewish protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic, gay), Jewish secondary characters, Chinese secondary characters, 🇨🇦,

warning: death of parent, sexual exposure, adult-teen relationship, anti-Chinese racism, fetal remains, homophobia

off my TBR

The Voyage of the Basilisk - Marie Brennan

To create a taxonomy of dragons, Isabella Camherst takes a voyage around the world—but as always, she runs afoul of politics, social mores, and other perils.

7/10

Middle Eastern-coded secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (third gender), Polynesian secondary characters

library book

The Secret History of Audrey James - Heather Marshall

In 1938 Berlin, piano student Audrey steps into danger when her Jewish hosts are arrested and she must turn housekeeper to Nazis to protect her best friend. In 2010, Kate takes a job at a hotel to restart her life after tragedy—and must convince Audrey, the owner, to let her stay.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), major Jewish secondary characters, secondary character with partial leg paralysis and a cane, 🇨🇦

warning: antisemitism, murder, police brutality, misogyny and sexism

library book

The Wood at Midwinter - Susanna Clarke

A young woman enters a midwinter wood alone and encounters a fox, a crow, and a bargain.

6.5/10

library ebook

Under a New and Brilliant Sky - R.E. Stearns

Elys, on the run from Republic authorities, is brought to Alyansa to fix a failure in their city’s AI. But the Republic knows where to find her, and she can’t quite trust that the Alyansans will keep her safe.

6/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), protagonist with auditory processing disorder, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (trans woman), brown-skinned secondary characters

warning: xenophobia, colonialism

digital reading copy/won

Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble - Alexis Hall

Paris isn’t really sure why he’s on Bake Expectations and he definitely isn’t sure how he feels about the contestant he keeps flirting with, if you can call it flirting, oh god, how do you relationship when anxiety?

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), protagonist with anxiety disorder, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (gay, sapphic), major Bangladeshi Muslim character, fat secondary character, Bangladeshi Muslim secondary characters, Chinese-British secondary character

warning: realistically depicts anxiety disorder and panic attacks

library ebook

Rivers of London Vol. 12: Stray Cat Blues - Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel with José María Beroy (Illustrator)

Abigail and the foxes are “hired” by a cat-woman to break her fellow hybrids out of a brothel. Easy, right? Out in December.

7/10

wajor Black British characters, disabled secondary character

warning: sex trafficking

purchased/off my TBR

The Price of the Stars - Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald

When Beka’s politician mother is assassinated, her father gives her his warship in exchange for her tracking the assassins down. Cue a pan-galactic adventure!

6/10

warning: sexual assault, gun violence

off my TBR

Currently reading

The Stardust Grail - Yume Kitasei

Maya’s put her thieving past aside to pursue academia, but when a chance to find the legendary stardust grail (and save her friend’s species) falls into her lap, she can’t help but be tempted—even if Earth wants to use it to save itself.

protagonist with Japanese heritage, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (achillean, nonbinary, alternate gender system)

library book

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 10 Yearly total: 116 Queer books: 4 Authors of colour: 0 Books by women: 6.5 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 2 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 4 Books hauled: 5 ARCs acquired: 2 ARCs unhauled: 2 DNFs: 0

January February March April May June July August September October

[loganhowlettshousewife]

logan howlett x latina!reader

series masterlist - my masterlist

“i need to learn spanish,” logan says out of the blue as you’re carefully doing your makeup. he likes to watch you get ready in the mornings, and though you don’t understand his fascination with the process you’ve been doing for years, it’s nice to have him around.

“is there a reason for this?” you ask, trying not to allow the conversation to distract you from the task at hand. you’ve gotten good at this, at both getting ready and talking to him, having conversations about everything and nothing, the kind of conversations he would never have with anyone else.

you met logan a few months ago, when he accompanied a group of mutant kids to canada, almost dying in the process to save them. he’d been on the verge of death when you found him, skin sallow and pale from the intense blood loss, breathing ragged. it hits you sometimes how lucky you are to have found him in time, to have been able to bring him back to his daughter - every day you’re infinitely grateful.

he’s struggled to adapt to life here. eden, a sanctuary for mutants that reminds him a bit too much of the x-mansion, the place where everything in his life went wrong. where he’d let his guard down little by little, letting people see past his mask, making relationships only to watch them all die. he could do nothing to save them.

so he hardly interacts with anyone other than you and laura kinney, his daughter, though lately she’s decided she wants everyone to call her laura howlett. the look on logan’s face when he told you was one you’d never forget: joy and fear and confusion, adoration for his little girl tinged with the anxiety of knowing that anyone close to him usually suffered terribly.

“laura,” he grumbles, which is the answer you expected. despite living in mexico for quite a few years, he didn’t pick up much spanish, and certainly not enough to understand laura’s rapid-fire quips. “she always says shit in spanish when she doesn’t want me to know what she’s sayin’.”

you laugh. laura’s a bright kid, and it’s true that she enjoys insulting logan in spanish, but only at the same frequency as her english insults towards him. most of the time her spanish comments are neither good nor bad, just stream of consciousness comments. she enjoys logan’s frustration at not being able to understand her, so really it doesn’t matter what she says, just that he hears it.

“i can try to teach you,” you reply, “but i’ve never taught anyone a language before, so be warned i may not be good at it.”

“a lot of people here speak spanish. i didn’t ask them.” logan says, “you’re the only person i can stand bein’ around for more than a few minutes, so you got a better shot than anyone else.”

you feel a rush of giddy excitement flow through you in response to his words. it’s not a secret that you find logan horribly, unbearably attractive with his salt-and-pepper hair and his beard and his deep eyes and his arms and honestly you could spend hours listing every one of his attractive features.

the point is, you want to kiss him stupid, and with the way he lingers around you in moments like these, makeup half-done and your bedsheets still rumpled from sleep, makes you hope that he might feel the same. maybe spending more time together is just what you need to figure it out.

“we can start tomorrow.” you agree.

diversity december taglist: @raeinyourdreams @meetmypointlessaddiction @chubbyhedgehog @yxtkiwiyxt @isepod @dis-plus-fanfic-reblog-writes @deaky-with-a-c

latina reader: @naggywaggy @mami-veracruz @spencerswh0r3 @taextannie @gl1ndathegoodwitch @uncertified-doc

[duckprintspress]

Final 24 Hours to Back “A Truth Universally Acknowledged”

The Kickstarter campaign to fund the publishing of A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” ends at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time on December 5th 2024!

That means, as I’m posting this, you only have 27 hours left, and the minutes are ticking by. We’re funded, but we’d love your help to hit a stretch goal and to knock our initial goal out of the park. It’s not your last chance to get this book – we’ll publish it for all after we finish campaign fulfillment, and late pledges are enabled for just the print book and e-book – but you’ll get it well ahead of anyone else, and it may be the only chance to get our awesome merchandise, depending how many extras we end up post-fulfillment!

Wondering what it’s all about? Well…

With this third installment in our Queer Fanworks Inspired By… anthology series, we set out to explore the truth by which we at Duck Prints Press live: that a classic work without a single canonically queer character must be in want of a very LGBTQIA+ makeover! A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with 21 short stories and 20 full-page color artworks, is just that. 38 creators have contributed to this project, drawing inspiration from Pride and Prejudice’s characters and story to create delightful, thoughtful, intriguing, and (of course) very queer fanworks and Pride and Prejudice-inspired original works. For this collection, we encouraged our creators to focus on Sapphic/wlw relationships and/or transgender and genderqueer interpretations for their inspiration, though those are definitely not the only types of queer we’ve fit into this diverse collection.

Want to know more? We’ve done 8 posts with teasers from all of our authors and artists!

Teaser Post 1: Authors A. D. Williams, E. V. Dean, and Genevieve Maxwell; Artists Max Jason Peterson and Jagoda Zirebiec

Teaser Post 2: Authors Rascal Hartley, Vee Sloane, and A. L. Heard; Artists Saro/Legendaerie and Cris Alborja

Teaser Post 3: Authors Taliesin Owens and Linnea Peterson; Artists Aceriee (our cover artist!) and Tomowowo

Teaser Post 4: Authors Mikki Madison, Lucy K. R., and Shea Sullivan; Artists Zel Howland and Elizabeth Rose.

Teaser Post 5: Authors Téa Belog, nottesilhouette, and Em Rowntree; Artists Flore Picard and mcdad arts

Teaser Post 6: Authors Lyonel Loy, Sage Mooreland, and ilgaksu; Artists A. A. Weston and Amalia Zeichnerin.

Teaser Post 7: Authors Dei Walker and Terra P. Waters; Artists radicalhoodie, May Barros, and J. Radin.

Teaser Post 8: Authors J. D. Harlock and Xianyu Zhou; Artists Xanthe P. Russell and Kendall Pletcher.

So help an indie press get their next anthology off the ground, and get lots of great works of fiction and art! Win-win! Become a backer today!

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

During the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Army had sixty-four brigadier generals, of which twenty were promoted to major general. Eleven of the brigadiers died in combat or from an illness during the war, and the British captured nine of them.

Some of the most notable brigadier generals included Nathanael Greene, who was known for his strategic vision and his successful campaign in the Southern theatre; Benedict Arnold, who initially fought for the American cause but later defected to the British side; Anthony Wayne, who was a skilled tactician and played a key role in the capture of Stony Point; Daniel Morgan, who was known for his unconventional tactics and his success in the Battle of Cowpens; and Horatio Gates, who was a controversial figure but who played a key role in the victory at Saratoga. Other notable brigadier generals included John Sullivan, who led the successful campaign against the Iroquois Confederacy; William Smallwood, who fought in several key engagements in the mid-Atlantic region; and Lachlan McIntosh, who played a role in the defense of Charleston and the Southern theatre. Overall, the brigadier generals of the Continental Army were a diverse group of leaders who contributed to the eventual American victory in many different ways.

Several foreign-born generals served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, including: Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. A Prussian drill master who played a key role in transforming the Continental Army into a professional fighting force. Johann de Kalb. A Bavarian-born French officer who served as a general in the Continental Army. Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. A French officer who served as a major general in the Continental Army. Michael Kovats de Fabriczy. A Hungarian nobleman and cavalry officer who served in the Continental Army. Tadeusz Kościuszko. A Polish military engineer. Chief Engineer with the Southern Department of the Continental Army. Charles Lee. A British soldier of fortune who was appointed the third-highest ranking general in the Continental Army.

There is no Brigadier General James Fraser who served as a high-ranking officer in the Continental Army; he is a fictional character from the fiction novel "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon. Jamie Fraser is not a real person; he is a creation of the author. However, Gabaldon was inspired by a real individual when developing her novel and later the series.

Posted 15th December 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2023 (Graphic Novels)

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

It's that time of year again, when I round up all the books I reviewed for my newsletter in the previous year. I posted 21 reviews last year, covering 31 books (there are two series in there!). I also published three books of my own last year (two novels and one nonfiction). A busy year in books!

Every year, these roundups remind me that I did actually manager to get a lot of reading done, even if the list of extremely good books that I didn't read is much longer than the list of books I did read. I read many of these books while doing physiotherapy for my chronic pain, specifically as audiobooks I listened to on my underwater MP3 player while doing my daily laps at the public pool across the street from my house.

After many years of using generic Chinese waterproof MP3s players – whose quality steadily declined over a decade – I gave up and bought a brand-name player, a Shokz Openswim. So far, I have no complaints. Thanks to reader Abbas Halai for recommending this!

https://shokz.com/products/openswim

I load up this gadget with audiobook MP3s bought from Libro.fm, a fantastic, DRM-free alternative to Audible, which is both a monopolist and a prolific wage-thief with a documented history of stealing from writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

All right, enough with the process notes, on to the reviews!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Shubiek Lubiek by Deena Mohamed

An intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth. Naturally, this has been an important element of geopolitics and colonization, especially since the wish-stuff is concentrated in the global south, particularly Egypt, the setting for our tale. The framing device for the trilogy is the tale of three "first class" wishes: these are the most powerful wishes that civilians are allowed to use, the kind of thing you might use to cure cancer or reverse a crop-failure.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/11/your-wish/#is-my-command

II. Ducks by Kate Beaton

In 2005, Beaton was a newly minted art-school grad facing a crushing load of student debt, a debt she would never be able to manage in the crumbling, post-boom economy of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Like so many Maritimers, she left the home that meant everything for her to travel to Alberta, where the tar sands oil boom promised unmatched riches for anyone willing to take them. Beaton's memoir describes the following four years, as she works her way into a series of oil industry jobs in isolated company towns where men outnumber women 50:1 and where whole communities marinate in a literally toxic brew of carcinogens, misogyny, economic desperation and environmental degradation. The story that follows is – naturally – wrenching, but it is also subtle and ambivalent. Beaton finds camaraderie with – and empathy for – the people she works alongside, even amidst unimaginable, grinding workplace harassment that manifests in both obvious and glancing ways.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/14/hark-an-oilpatch/#kate-beaton

III. Justice Warriors by Matt Bors

Justice Warriors is what you'd get if you put Judge Dredd in a blender with Transmetropolitan and set it to chunky. The setup: the elites of a wasted, tormented world have retreated into Bubble City, beneath a hermetically sealed zone. Within Bubble City, everything is run according to the priorities of the descendants of the most internet-poisoned freaks of the modern internet, click- and clout-chasing mushminds full of corporate-washed platitudes about self-care, diversity and equity, wrapped around come-ons for sugary drinks and dubious dropshipper crapola. It's a cop buddy-story dreamed up by Very Online, very angry creators who live in a present-day world where reality is consistently stupider than satire.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

IV. Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The story of three young Canadian women meeting up for a getaway to New York City. Zoe and Dani are high-school best friends who haven't seen each other since they graduated and decamped for universities in different cities. Fiona is Dani's art-school classmate, a glamorous and cantankerous artist with an affected air of sophistication. It's a dizzying, beautifully wrought three-body problem as the three protagonists struggle with resentments and love, sex and insecurity. The relationships between Zoe, Dani and Fiona careen wildly from scene to scene and even panel to panel, propelled by sly graphic cues and fantastically understated dialog.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/11/as-canadian-as/#possible-under-the-circumstances

Like I said, this has been a good year in books for me, and it included three books of my own:

I. Red Team Blues (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before—and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (nonfiction, Verso)

We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. We must to seize the means of computation by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users to leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Lost Cause (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth. The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

I wrote nine books during lockdown, and there's plenty more to come. The next one is The Bezzle, a followup to Red Team Blues, which comes out in February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

While you're waiting for that one, I hope the reviews above will help you connect with some excellent books. If you want more of my reviews, here's my annual roundup from 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/01/bookishness/#2022-in-review

Here's my book reviews from 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#bibliography

And here's my book reviews from 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Friday

SpaceTime 20250110 Series 28 Episode 5

Volcanic activity on Mars

A new study claims there’s evidence of recent volcanic activity on Mars showing that eruptions could have taken place on the red planet within the past 50,000 years – which is present day in geological time.

The mysteries of Supernova 1987A

Astronomers used the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope in outback in the West Australia to peer deep into the heart of Supernova 1987A to try and understand more about the progenitor star that triggered the most powerful explosion in our part of the sky in the last 400 years.

Dream Chaser launch delayed until May

The long awaited inaugural flight of Sierra Space Dream Chaser space plane is now expected to take place in May

The Science Report

Study shows mental disorders higher among the trans or gender-diverse groups.

Research warns to get narcissistic people out of your life and avoid them as quickly as possible.

Scientists find remarkably well preserved remains of a baby mammoth.

Skeptics guide to America’s top place to see UFOs

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.